Eleanor Roosevelt and African American Injustice

Eleanor Roosevelt only became concerned with racial injustices after she entered the White House. During the Great Depression, she traveled around the United States and encountered the hardships felt by many Americans. The field reports of Lorena Hickok that described the lacking of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration programs gave Elenor Roosevelt further proof of individual hardships across the United States. After speaking with the NAACP, Eleanor Roosevelt persuaded the National Recovery Administration to investigate race-based wage discrimination and the conditions of African Americans in the Depression. She also believed in equal educational opportunities for African Americans. Eleanor Roosevelt said, “wherever the standard of education is low, the standard of living is low.” She pushed states to recognize and fix the unequal public school funding. Her efforts gained the attention of the African American population and she began to receive thousands of letters depicting the poverty, racial violence, and homelessness caused by racial discrimination. Eleanor Roosevelt worked to include more African Americans in the Federal Emergency Relief Administration Programs. When Franklin Roosevelt opposed an Anti-Lynching bill for fear of upsetting southern senators, Eleanor Roosevelt defended this bill. She was then attacked by Southern newspapers and even accused of having black blood. Eleanor Roosevelt’s close friendship with Mary Bethune, a black woman, prompted her challenge to the segregation ordinance at a Southern Conference on Human Welfare. Eleanor Roosevelt declared many times that “there could be no democracy in the United States if it did not include democracy for blacks.” She believed that education, housing, and employment were human rights and that government must give protection against the violations of these rights. She believed that the discriminatory attitudes against African Americans prompted the destruction of freedom within the United States.